RE VERZIO: Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus

Madeleine Sackler | 2013 | UK, USA | 76‘

Wednesday, 15 April, 6 pm

Creating provocative theater carries great personal risks: emotional, financial and artistic. For the members of the Belarus Free Theatre, there are additional risks: censorship, imprisonment, and exile. When authorities forbid critical examinations of politics, suicide, sexuality, and alcoholism, the Free Theatre responds by injecting these taboos into performances that are staged underground. But flaunting government censorship and repression comes at some considerable risk. Even being an audience member requires some serious subterfuge. Comprised of smuggled footage and uncensored interviews, the film goes behind the scenes with the acclaimed troupe of imaginative and subversive performers. The documentary picks up the story in 2010, with the state crackdown on dissenters sixteen years after Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko takes power. In the aftermath of a dubious presidential election in 2012, the state secret services continue to target the Free Theatre, forcing its members to make a desperate choice: flee the country and continue to create work in exile, or stay and risk imprisonment.